"Chill it and kill it."! Not so fast. C, J California nonvintage bubbly built to last Jon BonnéSunday, August 29, 2010 Bottles of old nonvintage Roederer Estate Brut, a well-cr... It's hard to talk about California sparkling wine without drawing comparisons to certain other regions, including a certain particular part of northern France. Over time, the finest vintage examples of California fizz - Schrams- berg's J. Schram, Roederer Estate's Hermitage and lately Domaine Chandon's Etoile - have demonstrated the aging potential and durability to rival fine Champagne. That's why it's easy to overlook how much work and quality goes into more simple bottles of nonvintage bubbles. These are wines made to compete in the marketplace, often under $20 and certainly under $30; they require winemaking at scale - large tanks and vast quantities of grapes. Yet even most nonvintage California bubbly is still mostly based on a single vintage, often with a bit of reserve wine aged from previous years added to build extra complexity. Most of these nonvintage efforts are made to vanish as soon as market shelves can clear them - "chill it and kill it," as one sparkling winemaker put it. But that doesn't quite do credit to the tremendous skill and effort, and often long aging, that goes into a wine that is around $20 on the shelf. For counterpoint, I recently ran into 2007 Chronicle Winemaker to Watch Arnaud Weyrich of Roederer Estate, the Anderson Valley offshoot of Champagne Louis Roederer. The California outpost of Roederer is always fine-tuning their approach, as most sparkling houses are, and Weyrich had recently been experimenting in the cellar. He was toting along a lineup of old bottles that had been open about a day - not the vintage wines that are known for their age potential, but nonvintage efforts from years past, marked with their year of production. He was curious how they had held up. The answer: Astoundingly well. This doesn't help make the case for the many vintage bubbly efforts on the market, but it's a good lesson in why we should value the nonvintage bottles. Mind you, these weren't unfinished wines sitting on their lees to get extra complexity. These were complete nonvintage wines, disgorged (the lees removed), given a final dosage of sweetness to balance the wine and bottled with a cork. Because the purpose of nonvintage sparkling wine is consistent flavor - in practice this rarely happens, but that's the theory - Weyrich called them "variations on the same tune." The Roederer nonvintage made in 2002, disgorged in 2004 after two years aging, had as much precision and focused green apple flavors as the winery's vintage 2002 Hermitage, with hints of toffee and almond to show its slight age. A bottle from 1996 was the ripe vintage of the lot, approachable in a rounder, more tender way and full of toast and coffee bean and toffee notes, signs of a bubbly in mid-evolution. A distinct creaminess made it seem about at the limit of age, but after 14 years that's no mean feat. Back we moved, to a bottle from 1989, full of floral and ripe golden apple, hazelnut and toast. Here was a fully evolved wine, as evolved as all but the most austere Champagnes of equal age, but holding great acidity and showing distinct opulence (plus a slight taste of wood from about 17 years sitting on a cork). A 1989 nonvintage Roséas even better, full of ripe butterscotch and dried roses. In both, the freshness was memorable. Needless to say, these wines had the benefit of aging through the years in cool cellars in Philo - never moved or subjected to hot store shelves or months atop a kitchen counter. But considering that the price of most California nonvintage fizz has barely risen over the years - from perhaps the mid-teens two decades ago to the low $20s, it's a tribute both to the Champagne-style method, and to the talents of sparkling winemakers here, that such examples can endure. I've been buying and saving magnums of nonvintage California brut for several years now, marking the date of purchase and aging them to make the wines just a bit more interesting. Weyrich's experiment adds evidence that the desire not to rush is rewarded. So feel free to keep those nonvintage bottles around (if well stored) for a while; the common wisdom may dictate drinking them quick, but these wines really are built to last - in California as well as in Champagne. Jon Bonnés The Chronicle's wine editor. Find him at jbonne(a)sfchronicle.com or twitter.com/jbonne. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/29/FDIA1F2QTC.DTL This article appeared on page K - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle -- ------------------------------ * Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * University of Minnesota, mobile : 651/645-0753 * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 * * james(a)brewingnews.com James.Ellingson(a)StThomas.edu *